Joey just missed getting to the muffed punt that Zack recovered for a touchdown. He says, "Oh, yeah, I got made fun of a lot for not making that play."

For his efforts, Bowman was voted the NFC's special-teams player of the week after his first pro game.

Something else happened to him, however.

In between Bowman's touchdown and his pickoff in that wild Minnesota game Oct. 19 that the Bears won 48-41, the rookie cornerback from Nebraska got hurt.

Down he went. Pain shot through his right biceps. He remained flat on his back for quite a while, with teammates like Brian Urlacher hovering above him, watching yet another fallen Soldier Field comrade bite the dust.

Bowman had to be helped off. His arm was carefully wrapped. He says head trainer Tim Bream took good care of him.

"Doubtful to return," came an announcement about Bowman's status.

But his team had a big problem. A rash of injuries to defensive backs had seriously depleted the defense.

"I was disappointed," Bowman remembers. "They made an educated guess what was wrong with me. They started to ice me up, and it definitely looked like I was done.

"Tim came over and said, 'Hey, do you want to go back out there?'

"I said, 'Yes! Can I?'

"And he said, 'Well, you can't hurt it any worse.'"

Therefore, back out he went. And with 40 seconds left, Bowman picked off Gus Frerotte's pass at the Vikings' 41. One more score and this nutty 89-point slugfest could have gone into overtime.

What a day. What a debut.

"He'll never forget it," coach Lovie Smith noted afterward, very appreciative of the sacrifice this rookie made for the team by playing in pain.

Bowman, 23, admits he was so nervous before kickoff that he actually felt "scared."

He had spent the previous six weeks on the practice squad. The banged-up Bears activated him out of sheer desperation five days before the game.

The ex-Cornhuskers cornerback was the 142nd player taken in the 2008 NFL draft. LaRocque was the 243rd pick, a linebacker out of Oregon State.

Neither one came to the game expecting to have a shot at a touchdown.

They lined up for a Bears punt early in the second quarter with the score 17-17. Bowman described himself as "the gunner," a guy who streaks down a sideline and whose assignment is to try to down the ball before it gets into the end zone.

Vikings return man Charles Gordon let the ball fall.

He attempted to block Bowman to give the ball more time to cross the goal. But it took a funny hop and struck Gordon's hand.

It was LaRocque who got to the loose ball first, with Bowman a fraction of a second behind.

"I was in there flyin'," LaRocque recalls of the mad scramble for six points.

"He tried to go for the ball, and I did too. I was able to knock it away. I just wasn't athletic enough to come up with it."

His fellow rookie got a kick out of that.

"I told Joey, 'Thank you, man,'" Bowman says.

LaRocque had a good laugh of his own.

"The joke on Zack is -- One-Hit Wonder," he kids.

That's because Bowman is out for the season.

He underwent surgery Wednesday -- one game and done.

He became the first Bear in 58 years to register a touchdown plus an interception in his NFL debut, matching the 1950 feat of a Midway monster of the post-leatherhead era named Gerald "Bones" Weatherly.

The Alaskan Nebraskan -- his hometown is Anchorage, but he played college ball in Lincoln -- said in a phone interview he was feeling OK since his surgery and he planned to come to Sunday's game against the Detroit Lions to pull for the guys.

"I had a lot of fun," Bowman says. "I guess if you can only get in one game, that was a good one."

No, it was better than that.

LaRocque would like his teammate to know that after a first NFL game like that, Bowman better hurry up and get well because the Bears could have big plans for him.

"When he gets back, he's going to be a stud," LaRocque says. "We're going to use him to be a playmaker.

"You get one opportunity, and you turn it into NFC player of the week. That's pretty cool."